大象传媒

I joined the R.N. as a volunteer aged seventeen in March 1945. I joined several other lads at the Recruiting Office in Reading, from there we went to Kings Cross Station in London where we became part of a larger party of volunteers and conscripts from all over the South of England. We then entrained to H.M.S.Royal Arthur, Butlins Holiday Camp at Skegness! Once after various tests and induction we then separated into our various trades and in my case, with many of my new friends, transported to one of three camps in Lancashire. The three camps were all under the general name of H.M.S Gosling and were situated between Manchester and Warrington. Here we received training in drill, fitness and weapons before being sent to our technical training.

As can be imagined we had had very little spare time during this intial period which lasted for the best part of two months. Consequently at every opportunity we were Ashore' on 'Liberty'.

During my schooldays from the advent of the war until I joined up I had followed the progress of the war avidly and I was in fact one of the few who had ever heard of the Concentration Camps into which the Germans had herded anyone they disliked or who they thought had acted against the interests of the Reich. Even so I had no real under- standing of what went on there. However, in April, 1945, the first of the 'Death Camps' was liberated. One weekend several of our 'Entry' went into Manchester. As we left the Railway Station we passed a cinema, although used to queues at cinemas we were astounded at the length of this one and also the fact that there was a line of ambulances standing outside. Then we found out that the cinema was showing the first newsreels of the Death Camps.We still didn't really understand until we ourselves later visited another cinema where the newsreels were showing. The scenes were indescribable. I was seventeen at the time and in common with practically everyone else in the auditorium
who didn't faint, I cried. People were taken out in droves, either unconscious or hysterical, hence the ambulances.

I suppose most people these days have seen those same newsreels, probably in some historical programme on television. But, believe me they cannot imagine the impact those pictures had on the relatively unsophisticated population of those days, who could never conceive of such inhumanity. For me that first impression has remained with me for the rest of my life, even watching them again on television reduces me to tears.

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